Fired for Pro-Life View, Health Aide Says : But Department Charges Abortion Foe Disobeyed Her Superior

Jo Ann Gasper, fired last week as deputy assistant secretary of health and human services for refusing to issue grants to two Planned Parenthood groups, claimed Tuesday she was really ousted for trying to further “President Reagan’s pro-life policies.”

“I was fired because I am pro-life,” Gasper said at a press conference. “I was fired because I stood up for my convictions.”

If she’s right, Gasper, 40, who oversaw family planning programs, apparently would be the first pro-life activist appointed during the Reagan Administration to be fired for her views on abortion.

But Chuck Kline, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department, disputed the claim. Gasper was dismissed, he said, because she refused, after repeated orders by Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services Dr. Robert E. Windom, “to renew funding for two family planning agencies.”

“Jo Ann has been trying for several years to do anything she could toward the elimination of abortion,” Kline added. “That’s Administration policy too, but you have to do it within the law.”

The firing has sparked a debate about the intentions of the federal family planning program, known as Title X of the Public Health Service Act of 1970, among officials and groups on both sides of the abortion issue.

Gasper said she refused to issue grants to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin when they were up for renewal last month because authorizing the funding would be “unlawful.” She said the program, which she had headed since 1985, prohibits Title X funds from being used “in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.”

Criticizes Guidelines

She also has contended that departmental guidelines for the program, which require grant recipients to offer information about abortion--as well as about prenatal care and adoption--to pregnant women seeking advice, are inconsistent with the law.

But Kline said the program does allow the department to fund pro-choice organizations, so long as it has no evidence that the grants are being spent on abortion activities. Subsequent to the firing of Gasper last Thursday, the department extended the grants to both groups.

Gasper’s supporters include Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.), who told the same news conference on Tuesday that Health and Human Services Department “officials have repeatedly skirted the law by allowing federal funds to go to organizations that advocate abortion as a method of family planning.”

Humphrey, blaming Secretary of Health and Human Services Otis R. Bowen for “thwarting the President’s policies,” said he would ask that the department’s inspector general, Richard P. Kusserow, investigate the funding of pro-choice organizations, as well as its firing of Gasper.

Pro-choice groups, meanwhile, criticized Gasper, describing her as a political appointee who vehemently has tried to change a federal program without congressional approval.

Despite language in the appropriations bill for fiscal 1987, prohibiting changing provisions of the Title X program without congressional consent, Gasper sent a letter on Jan. 21 to the nation’s 10 regional health administrators, ordering them to defund Planned Parenthood affiliates and any other organizations that “promote abortion, advocate abortion or otherwise encourage abortion.”

Her order was rescinded the next day, and Gasper was reprimanded for acting without authority by Windom and prohibited from running the program until March 12.

“The firing was overdue,” said William W. Hamilton Jr., Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Washington director.